Trudy Rubin: Our Iraqi allies wait in fear

As the courts ponder President Trump's ill-advised immigration ban, nothing better illustrates its cruelty and carelessness than its impact on Iraqis who risked their lives to help Americans.

You may not know that many Iraqis who risked their lives helping Americans are still excluded by the ban.

Iraqis' lives are endangered because they worked for U.S. military or civilian officials, aid agencies, contractors or journalists. Now Trump's ban has left them dangerously in the lurch.

There are about 50,000 Iraqis in the queue, including family members, and the process can drag on for as much as five years, say staffers at the International Refugee Assistance Project.

The delay is partly due to the acute shortage of U.S. personnel to interview the applicants at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. It can take two years or more just to get the first of two required interviews. Then the "extreme" security vetting by multiple agencies in the United States can take at least two and sometimes many more years — President Trump, please take note.

The presidential order will increase the backlog, because all interviews are now suspended, and visas have been canceled — some just before the recipients were about to fly to America. Even if the ban is rescinded in 90 days, the disruption will set back the program for much longer. And, because the order cuts the annual number of refugee admissions by more than half, it further dims the hopes of these Iraqis.

Talking by phone to Baghdad, I heard frustration and anguish.

"We are fighting ISIS and we are not allowed (to get visas)," Ahmed F. told me, after his sister-in-law's second interview was just canceled. "What about Saudi Arabia (most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis)? The White House destroyed us and I don't know why."

Why, indeed. This is a question I also hear from Ali H., who has been living under death threat for 18 months in Baghdad while waiting for his first interview for asylum. Now no one can say if that interview will happen.

I have a personal interest in Ali's case; his brother Salam was my translator in Baghdad and helped U.S. soldiers arrest Shiite militia goons who were murdering his Sunni neighbors. When the U.S. military withdrew, those militiamen came after Salam and his family, murdering one brother and a cousin.

Salam escaped to Cyprus with his family, but Ali remains trapped under death threat, living in hiding. He has had to send his family to live in southern Iraq with relatives. Ali is entitled — as the brother of someone who worked for U.S. journalists — to an American visa once he completes the process. But he has been waiting in vain.

The last time I reached Ali by phone he told me, "I can't go out on the street in daylight because someone from the militia might be waiting to kill me." Ali may be waiting for many more years.

Ali's tragic case points to the absurdity of the president's executive order. No Iraqi refugee has ever committed a terrorist act on American soil.

If the president really wanted to make America safer he would cement ties with Iraqis who are our allies. Instead, he is sending a message that Iraqis who help Americans will be disdained and betrayed.

Trudy Rubin (trubin@phillynews.com) is a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer.